Fort Collins Toddys to close

FORT COLLINS — Three months after Toddys Market closed its doors in Greeley, the longtime grocer announced the closing of its Fort Collins store — Toddys’ final location.

Toddys store at 2601 S. Lemay Ave. has been purchased by Sunflower Markets, a natural-food store. Toddys will close June 15; Sunflower will reopen the store in October after renovations. The outside appearance of the store is likely to change as well.

The sale brings an end to 27 years of Toddys stores. The store at Lemay was open for 24 years with the

Greeley store being the oldest. The Greeley store was sold to drug retailer Walgreens in January and closed in mid-February. There were two other stores in Colorado — one in Denver that opened in 1986 but closed three years later, and another in Berthoud that was open from 1995-2001.

The closing of the Greeley store seemed to ensure the fate of the Fort Collins Toddys. The Fort Collins closure was announced to the store’s 148 full- and part-time employees Monday morning.

“I think everyone knew it was coming,” said Mick Todd, president of Toddys Market and a Greeley resident. “We sold for a number of personal reasons. We decided not to stay in business because of age and health. We just don’t want to be in the business anymore. Sunflower Markets came along, and it seemed like a good fit.”

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Buried by low-priced competition — and faced with another offer too good to refuse — the Fort Collins Toddys will close in much the same way the Greeley one did.

“We’re going to sell off inventory by mid-June,” Todd said.

Inventory at the Greeley store was marked down to almost nothing and equipment and fixtures later hit the auction block.

The closure leaves the Fort Collins community feeling much the same way the Greeley closure did — an end to Toddys means an end to an era.

“It’s sad they are going to close. It’s smaller than the big competing stores, but it has nice perks for older people, like grocery delivery,” said Trudy Fox, a 50-year-old Fort Collins resident whose son’s first job was at the store. “They had a nice smaller feel with really nice services that made Fort Collins feel more like a town than a big city.”

As for Toddys’ employees, Todd hopes they will be hired on with Sunflower Markets.

“We would be very interested in interviewing Toddys employees, but we know it will be hard for some of them,” said Bennett Bertoli, the company’s vice president of real estate. “We will be down for several months before we can get the store remodeled and reopened, so we know many of the Toddys employees can’t wait that long.”

Toddys employees declined comment.

But Bertoli thinks Sunflower Markets will be a good fit for Fort Collins.

“We did quite a bit of market research, and we found that Fort Collins has a lot of health-conscious people who want this kind of food,” Bertoli explained.

While Sunflowers Markets’ emphasis will be on produce, the store will be a full-fledged grocery store, Bertoli said.

The store will also be billed as a discount natural foods store that features a “farmers market” feel.

“We’ll have a different look,” Bertoli said. “There will be low shelving. In a typical supermarket, all you can see is up and down the aisles because the shelves are stacked so high. We use low shelving so you can see the entire store. It’s like being at a farmers market.”

With its new location, Sunflower officials hope to attract consumers from Windsor and neighboring towns as well.

“I think this will bring new life to the center,” said Dave Sitzman, one of the partners of the Scotch Pines Shopping Center where Toddys is. “It had become stale with the same tenant, but Sunflower is very growth- oriented. Long-term, it will be great.”